reaching the most vulnerable around the world, it is children who are most in need – of health...
TRANSCRIPT
Reaching the most vulnerable
Around the world, it is children who are most in need – of health care, adequate nutrition, education, protection. Children who live in remote locations or in poverty, who are discriminated against or marginalized for whatever reasons, or who are simply vulnerable as a result of natural disasters or conflict situations can be the hardest to reach. These children must be reached wherever they are, because investing in the most disadvantaged children yields some of the most lasting rewards. These photographs depict what disparities can look like up close and how efforts are making a difference.
All children have the right to a quality education, regardless of whether they can communicate in the language spoken by the majority of their country’s population. Children from an ethnic minority in Viet Nam attend a bilingual school – a proven path to better learning.
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In Lebanon, Palestinian refugee children – such as this girl on her first day of school – face an uncertain future. To bolster the children’s chances of learning and thriving, UNICEF distributes quality school supplies and supports remedial education.
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In Pakistan, local ‘lady health workers’ bring health information and medical supplies to women in rural areas. Vital sources of help after devastating floods in 2010, these health workers showed this mother how to protect her child from disease and dehydration.
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Pregnant women can find themselves without access to medical attention in the aftermath of natural disasters. A group of expectant mothers displaced by Pakistan’s floods receives maternal care that will sustain life and health, long after normalcy is restored.
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Poverty means that many people cannot afford health care in Sierra Leone, which has among the world’s highest child and maternal mortality rates. A new government programme provides free health care to some of those who need it most – mothers and young children.
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In Mindanao, the Philippines, access to safe drinking water protects a girl’s health. The country will likely achieve the part of the Millennium Development Goal for providing safe water – but not in all regions. Two thirds of families in Mindanao are still without it.
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Haiti is one of the world’s poorest countries and, as such, among the least equipped to recover from natural disasters. A year after the 2010 earthquake, UNICEF continued to treat undernourished children, helping to prevent an increase in acute malnutrition cases.
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Following Haiti’s earthquake, emergency response teams fanned out across the country. They helped to deliver life-saving vaccines and nutritional supplements to nearly 2 million vulnerable children under age 5.
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Children in some countries, such as Angola, continue to miss out on the series of vaccinations needed to fully protect them from diseases. Young Georgina, whose legs are paralysed by polio, is one of those children. Vaccines are highly cost-effective health investments that could save 2 million lives a year globally if they reached all children.
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Unsafe behaviour, which, among other things, puts adolescents at risk of contracting HIV, accounted for more than 40 per cent of new infections around the world in 2009 among people older than 15 years old. Specially tailored workshops in Peru’s Amazon region equip indigenous youth with knowledge that could save their lives.
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At 15, Madhamal (left) has survived child labour and narrowly escaped child marriage. As a girl and member of a disadvantaged minority in India, her prospects had been grim until the opportunity arose for her to go to school.
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Some of Malawi’s most vulnerable children live in families with no adults. UNICEF helps to identify such children and to provide the families with essential household supplies, as part of a new social system that seeks to protect children from the risks they confront.
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